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#388588 09/30/14 09:18 AM
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Yesterday I ordered some new bait for my forage pond and managed to get bluntnose minnows, spotfin shiners, and lake chubsuckers from Jonah's Aquarium. After I sent my money to Jonah's I received a reply to an earlier e-mail I sent to Zimmerman's Fish and he said they have 150 1-2" lake chubsuckers they are selling for $4 a piece, down from $6 they usually charge. I thought this might be useful information for anyone else looking to buy some lake chubsuckers for a forage pond or a new pond without predators, since they are only 1-2" they probably would be eaten up quickly in a pond with predators.

http://www.zimmermansfish.com/

Last edited by RockvilleMDAngler; 09/30/14 09:18 AM.

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Thank you - I left him an email. His web site shows 1/4" fish for $6 each. Does anyone have any idea if 1-2" LCSs would survive in a floating cage that is only 3 feet deep (in central Indian)?

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LCS do not do well in a cage. Been there done that very unsuccessfully.


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Thanks for letting me learn from your experience! How about an aquarium? How many gallons per 1-2" fish?

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Originally Posted By: Bill Cody
LCS do not do well in a cage. Been there done that very unsuccessfully.


I've watched LCS in an aquarium, and, not surprisingly for a "sucker", they're extremely bottom oriented. Last year, I had some in a 2x2x2ft screen cage with a solid bottom, which I covered with gravel--they overwintered fine in TN, although I don't think they grew at all over the winter. After watching them feed and on and relate themselves to the bottom in an aquarium, I can imagine that they would do very poorly in a floating cage with a mesh bottom.

They'll do fine in a 20 gallon long aquarium. They really like shrimp pellets and algae wafers. They're very active and fun to watch as they pick though the bottom sand and gravel.

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Will they eat regular fish food and do OK?

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I wonder if they will stir up the bottom as much as koi do?


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I've seen them eat some flakes, but they really prefer the shrimp pellets and algae wafers-both of which you can get at most pet stores.

I doubt they stir up the bottom much at all-they have small mouths, and typically orient themselves nearly vertically as they pick through stuff on the bottom. They'll pick up little pebbles in their mouths, roll them about, then spit them out, but don't really stir up large areas, at least in my observations of the juveniles.

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Yolk Sac provides good observational information about feeding behavior of the LCS. A few reports that have studied the LCS noted that they did not noticeably make the water turbid as koi, carp, and bullheads tend to do. Natural food items are things found in the sediments such invertebrates (insect larvae and worms), small crustaceans and some organic materials. Some filamentous algae has been found in their stomach contents, but the algae may have been eaten together with the bugs tangled in the algae.

LCS and LMbass.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=nebgamepubs

Last edited by Bill Cody; 10/01/14 04:25 PM.

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My son has a poorly maintained fish tank full of swordtails that has a bunch of debris in the bottom. It has a heater also. Do you think the LCS would do well in this tank (eat some of the gunk)?

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If you acclimated them to the temp, they likely would do OK. I wouldn't want temps over 84 degrees though. My experience with LCS in aquaria was they were fairly easy to maintain.

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Thank you - I'll check the temp. It may be a mute point as I have not seen a reply to my email. Maybe they are all gone.

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1/4" are small fish, and aren't swordtails "pecky" at smaller fish?


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I know it shows 1/4" fish on the website but the ones he has now must have grown. They are now 1-2" now. Mine arrive on Friday as Jonah's Aquarium had bought some from him and re-sold them to me. I hope they take fish food!


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Got an email today and will order the fish. Now I just need to keep them alive. What is the best way to set up a large horse trough to keep the water suitable? I filled a 20 gallon (tall) tank from one of the ponds and started the filter and air stone (for the winter). Do I need to buy shrimp to feed them or will fish flakes be OK?

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I would ask Zimmerman what he was feeding them...

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He has them in a plastic-lined pond and says he does not feed them. I'll try the fish food and adjust as needed.

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is there seariously such a demand for LCS??


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Only time will tell... For now, Zimmerman is filling a small niche market. Ideally, you would purchase a small number of the LCS, say 20-25 and stock them when you stocked the FHM into your pond. Give them a jump start on the predators. Then allow those original stockers be your brood fish for the future. Adding LCS in low numbers at that cost into an already established pond would be a waste of money.

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RAH--try these. You can get them at almost any petstore [or on Amazon], and the LCS love them.

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Thank you - I will stop by a pet store and see if I can find some. Update - Looks like Petsmart has them.

Last edited by RAH; 10/04/14 11:16 AM.
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The fish arrived on Friday and my Dad acclimated them and released them into the forage pond. He said they were all lively and 2"+ which was great news. I arrived the next day and there were no floaters and I didn't see any of them but I didn't expect to either. I threw some food in and they were not interested but the weather was in the low 60s and the fish in my other pond were barely eating when their feeder went off.


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Anyone ordering LCS probably needs to submit a request for fish import permit from their state DNR UNLESS these are for your aquarium and not your pond. In NE they require one to complete an import permit and request disease testing certification/paperwork from Brian Zimmerman. I helped him get those fish tested by certified Vet in OH, and I know he has the qualifying paperwork - so you shouldn't have any issues on that front. Just trying to protect you guys from violating state regs as they are cracking down and I know a few personally who have unintentionally violated the law and are suffering consequences.

Of course, if these are destined for your aquarium, you have nothing to worry about, as states cannot possibly and do not monitor or regulate aquarium fish sales/imports/exports. Speaking from experience only here guys, and don't want to see anyone get jammed.


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Probably lots of other forage species besides LCS that would be great food for thought/discussion on this forum and good food for the bigger fish as well.

I don't think all the emphasis or excitement is on the LCS per se, but just that it is exciting to have other options for forage, especially unique options that fill a special niche in the forage 'ladder'.

more FYI:


From Brian's newsletter:
Copyright © 2014 Zimmerman's Fish, All rights reserved.
We send this email to our customers who wanted to be informed about recent news on available fish, new species, or projects.

(he has given me permission to use although the pictures didn't reproduce, others may know how to get the pictures in, the blue nose shiner is very cool looking!)

-------------
After a busy summer of breeding lots of fish, we are now harvesting the results. Some of our big successes for this year have been the bluenose shiners, tricolor shiners, and a large variety of sunfish again!

The bluenose shiners are very difficult to produce in captivity because of their need to breed in a sunfish nest. To our knowledge, we are only the second persons to successfully breed large numbers of this species. In our case we had them in a pond with a single pair of redear sunfish and a group of longear sunfish. There were 6 pairs of bluenose shiners that we very active all summer mostly over the redear nest. There were several potted plants in this 20’x20’ rubber lined pond, and this resulted in 300 young that are now currently 1-1.5’’. We tried an additional 6 pairs in a different pond with western dollar sunfish, and did not have any results. Overall, we are very happy with this success!


We also tried to breed several different species in our newly built outdoor stream. We put several cyprinids, darters, and brindled madtom catfish to start. We had great success with the tricolor shiners and started seeing young almost immediately. We think that the other species might have been placed in the stream a little too late for their breeding season to spawn. Now that things are in place, we predict that next year we will be able to start sooner for species that spawn in early spring. Hopefully we have more success with several darter species and many more minnows.


Once again we are successful with quite a few different sunfish species including a couple of new longear sunfish varieties. We had a strain from the Mobile River Basin in Alabama that display red and blue speckling on the body. We also attempted to breed a strain from the Blackwater River Basin from the Florida panhandle. This longear was less successful and only got a few young out of the pond. We hope to try them again next year for better results. This variety has an abundance of blue speckles all over resembling that of an extra-large dollar sunfish.

As for the other sunfish species, we had pretty good success with Missouri River Basin longear, green, western dollar, northern longear, bantam, redear, and raised redspotted sunfish for the first time in several years.
Lastly, we also raised some other odds and ends which included: lake chubsuckers, western banded killifish, pygmy killifish, russetfin topminnows, golden topminnows, starhead topminnows, gulf coast pygmy sunfish, least killifish, brown darters and iowa darters.

We still have a few ponds to clean out and harvest which may have blackbanded sunfish, central mudminnows, and banded sunfish. We strive to keep our website up to date with the sizes and species available, so keep your eye out for any new additions this fall.



Last edited by canyoncreek; 10/06/14 12:18 PM. Reason: typo
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Probably should have asked earlier, but I now have read that LCS like clear water. Will ponds of normal clarity be suitable?

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